Is there a conspiracy to create a digital payment society? Yes, conspiracy theorists arise as always. Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, so why not have one that deals with something near to us, our money. But not just our money, but how we spend it as well. How we spend that money that is the source of this particular conspiracy. Do we spend our money using cash, or using credit and debit cards, or in other words, are we mostly cashless and digitized?

Why a conspiracy about digital payment?

It has long been thought that it is only a matter of time before we become a digital payment society. Technology and us as consumers have already changed the face of and how we bank. Bank branches are closing due to the fact we use online and mobile banking more and more. We have the ability now to pay for purchases not just with credit and debit cards, but also our mobiles and other means, which once again means no physical cash.

But this still does not answer the question, if we are moving towards a cashless society on our own, why is there a conspiracy about this? What is in it for someone, who is this someone, and what are they to gain? They are trying to push you into using their digital payments and digital banking infrastructure. Just like Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal, so financial institutions want everyone to access and navigate the broader economy through their systems. Another aim is to cut costs in order to boost profits. Branches require staff. Replacing them with standardized self-service apps allows the senior managers of financial institutions to directly control and monitor interactions with customers.

Banks, of course, tell us a different story about why they do this. Bank will tell us that they are shutting down local branches because “customers are turning to digital”, and they are thus “responding to changing customer preferences”. We are one of the customers they are referring to, but we never asked them to shut down the branches! There is a feedback loop going on here. In closing down their branches, or withdrawing their cash machines, they make it harder for me to use those services. We are much more likely to “choose” a digital option if the banks deliberately make it harder for me to choose a non-digital option.

In behavioural economics this is referred to as “nudging”. If a powerful institution wants to make people choose a certain thing, the best strategy is to make it difficult to choose the alternative.

We can illustrate this with the example of self-checkout tills at supermarkets. The underlying agenda is to replace checkout staff with self-service machines to cut costs. But supermarkets have to convince their customers. They thus initially present self-checkout as a convenient alternative. When some people then use that alternative, the supermarket can cite that as evidence of a change in customer behaviour, which they then use to justify a reduction in checkout employees. This in turn makes it more inconvenient to use the checkout staff, which in turn makes customers more likely to use the machines. They slowly wean you off staff, and “nudge” you towards self-service.

Financial institutions, likewise, are trying to nudge us towards a digital payment society and digital banking. The true motive is corporate profit. Payments companies such as Visa and Mastercard want to increase the volume of digital payments services they sell, while banks want to cut costs. The nudge requires two parts. First, they must increase the inconvenience of cash, ATMs and branches. Second, they must vigorously promote the alternative. They seek to make people “learn” that they want digital, and then “choose” it.

Besides this also benefited to the The Taxman. If government can track your spending, they can know how much you spend. Spend too much, they may think you have income you are not paying taxes on. This could trigger a closer look into our taxes and what we are paying.

To summarize, digital systems may be ‘convenient’, but they possessed a conspiracy that we wouldn’t know. So, while cashless sounds good to some, we need to be aware of one aspect of it, the whole house of cards is dependent on computers and technology functioning, and functioning 24/7/365. There can be “glitches” that could cash widespread disruption in our new cashless conspired world.